In Wisconsin, the polls all indicated Scott Walker was getting recalled by a 7 point margin and we all know he is still the sitting governor in that state. If anyone thinks this is an Obama win because he is up a point or two in a couple states is foolish beyond belief.

"In Wisconsin, the polls all indicated Scott Walker was getting recalled by a 7 point margin..."

Took me 10 seconds to fact check that. Real Clear Politics shows 16 polls of that recall race, and Walker was behind in only 2 of them, and those 2 were early on. The RCP average over the last 3 weeks was Walker up by 6.7%, and he won by 6.8% So, what you said. Not true. But the actual polls, not your fictional remembered ones, were accurate.

Those polls come from our reality. There is another, separate reality in which everyone is riding tame dinosaurs and they have flying cars. Occasionally it intersects with ours via internet commentary.

This night 4 years ago I would've bet my family and my soul that Senator Obama would win. Tonight I would probably bet my car (which is worth less to me, in case you're wondering). Gov Romney might win popular vote but electorally he hasn't much of a chance IMO. He couldn't break NV,PA,OH,WI,IA,MI at any point this year (though he probably won himself Florida). Good thing he secured MO and NC or this could've gotten ugly. But just like 2004 we'll have to wait a few hours to know for sure.

"In November 1980, the great TIME correspondent and editor John F. Stacks (a mentor to such stars as John Dickerson and many others) won the unenviable task of analyzing how and why every single public pollster (including ours) missed the Reagan landslide earlier that month. Wrote Stacks:

For weeks before the presidential election, the gurus of public opinion polling were nearly unanimous in their findings. In survey after survey, they agreed that the coming choice between President Jimmy Carter and Challenger Ronald Reagan was “too close to call.” A few points at most, they said, separated the two major contenders."

Until last March, American voters did not realise how fortunate they had been to have Jimmy Carter as President when Three Mile Island happened. Another example of how disaster averted never gets credited...

Given the convenient intolerance of American sports for any kind of drawn or tied result, not to mention the fact I don't have statistics to hand to check my analogy against, this is tricky, but I'll give it a shot:

It's the beginning of the fifth day, Team Romney need three hundred runs to win with eight wickets in hand. And there's a storm forecast for the evening. And Team Obama only need a draw to take the series.

The BBC has already raised the spectre of racist America voting against Obama because he is black by interviewing two African-American experts who grandly proclaimed that some whites are voting against Obama due to his race. The BBC reporter blindly accepted this as fact without asking them to provide the source for their claims.

If less whites are voting for Obama this time, it certainly isn't due to racism as those whites who voted for him in 2008 didn't suddenly became racist and decide to vote for Romney. But rather it is due to the economy.

However trust the BBC to push the America is racist diatribe conveniently forgetting that British society today is too racist to even contemplate a Prime Minister of Pakistani or Indian origin let alone vote for one for the highest office in the land.

Polls wouldn't help. If you want to find out whether people are racist, asking them "Hey, are you racist?" is just about the worst way to go about that.

That said, I agree that their statement is silly. Race probably is the critical factor for "some whites," but we don't know if it's 0.0005% or 2% or 80%. To get even a rough estimate, some kind of data are needed.

What is interesting is that polls show a sizable portion of Americans have objections to a Mormon president. If the same portion had objections to a black president, Obama could not have been elected in 2004 so bigtry against Mormons is far worse than bigtry against race.

Never mind the BBC has to have its America is racist angle. The British focus obsessively on racism in the USA while conveniently whitewashing racism in Britain. A British Prime Minister from one of its largest minority groups such as Pakistani or Indian heritage is unthinkable in Britain today.

There are white people who won't vote for a black candidate because they don't like black people. There are white people who will vote for a black candidate because it makes them feel socially enlightened.

How many there are of each we'll never know, because people do not acknowledge these considerations to themselves, much less to a pollster.

What the BBC say about racist voters in America does not deny the possibility of racist voters in the UK. Ultimately, I don't see why it matters.

"Why is the British media not looking at the bigotry against Mormons which is far worse according to polls?"

Discrimination on the basis of race ignores the ideas, character, intelligence, beliefs and values of the individual. Discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation ignores a lot less. On the whole, I prefer the latter to the former, though neither is desirable.

A Romney victory would shake up the pollster business as much as a 9.0
Richter Scale Earth quake followed by a Global Tsunami! How could hundreds of polls by dozens of INDEPENDENT pollsters be so consistently WRONG! A close election is strongly indicated but NOT an upset election.

It's a couple of points beyond the margin of error in each of several of the swing states.

There is, of course, some chance that the polls are wrong in some places. Indeed, it would be at least mildly surprising if they were not -- that's what statistical sampling means. But the more of them that have to be wrong to change the overall result, the greater the odds are against that result changing.

Except, as Nate Silver has pointed out, the state polls are not completely independent. If pollsters failed to account for some factor (such as, for example, the possibility that Romney supporters are more or less likely to answer polls than Obama voters), then it's likely that fact affected many states, not just one - and in that case, you could see a difference in most of the swing states, not just a couple. Last I saw, he said that most of the hedging in his prediction was in case demographics have changed enough that our current polling models are incorrect.

Each of the polling firms uses its own factors to adjust for the difference that (they think) exists between the people who answer and the general (voting) population. And the difference between what people say and what they will eventually do. So a given polling firm may well have the same error (if any) across all of the states that they poll.

But different firms' errors should be independent. Or at least semi-independent, given that they are at least partially based on the comparing past polling with eventual election results. Still, it reduces (but does not eliminate) the probability of errors being systematic across multiple firms.

Still waiting for the explanation of WHY all those hypothesized Republicans don't answer the phone. While it is possible they are a bunch of hard-partying cell-only young people who are never home and don't answer calls not from their friends, it seems a tad unlikely.

That's not the hypothesis. The idea is that the pollsters have 45 African Americans answer the phone and they weight their responses so that they make up 8% of the poll. This is demographic weighting that many polls do.

Now the idea, which is possible, is that the black vote will be only 6% (or white people will vote more or other things) so that the polls are biased for Obama.

I'm not saying this happened but it's certainly a valid source of bias that could have messed with polls.

If my assumption is correct that you live in California—the most under-represented state in the Electoral College and one of the least fought-for states of the campaign—then it's safe to say that your vote means absolutely nothing. Enjoy the weather.

Poor poker analogy. AA vs. KK pre-flop, AA has an 81% chance of winning, and KK an 18% of outdrawing AA. It's more like Obama is all in with QQ and Romney called with AK, with QQ likely to prevail 56% of the time.

Mr.R.Omni is a fine candidate, a mighty fine candidate, with a sterling business career, a good man, good father, good husband. A competent manager, entrepreneur, CEO, venture capitalist, public servant, pillar of the church, a patriot brimming with intelligence.
All things to all men. A latter-day Medici.
Butttt... Alright, I won't ruin it for my dear, sorely tested conservative amigos. He may be too good, too noble for the heaviest of offices and responsibilities.

Great article ! I do wonder however whether the statistical modelling factors in the numerous voter-suppression tactics that have been coming to light in ever-increasing numbers over the past week or so.

Key swing states (including Florida, Virginia, Ohio and others) have faced fewer early voting locations that are open for shorter periods of time; voters receiving calls from call centres who 'take their votes by phone' so they don't have to wait for hours in a queue; the still clear as mud voter eligibility regarding photo ID, etc...

Once again, like in the recount saga of 2000, we witness the ole GOP strategy of 'if you can't win, cheat'. Problem is, they do so like grand masters.

The GOP have been preparing for this election for years, with the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, and more so, through the re-districting initiatives to ring-fence and consolidate Republican Congressional seats. That particular battle has been won early & well below the radar.

Even if President Obama wins the White House and the Senate stays Democratic, the House is more likely to remain GOP-led, with some of the same partisan, hostage-holding tactics expected over the coming months. With the smart money from the Koch brothers going primarily at state level to make red states even redder, and get more GOP governors & representatives in the blue states, the debate on federal vs. state legislature and governance will continue to remain a big distraction too, taking the focus away from the economic recovery and the nation-building sorely required.

I actually didnt understand this line at all. I wont use the word civilized as its decisive but all healthy and economically large democracies either use a pure Parliamentarian system, a Monarchy/Parliamentarian system, or a Semi-Presidential system (France). All of these systems have the prime ruler selected through an indirect vote.

The countries that have an American Presidential system are all in South America, Central Africa and the Stans. The US would actually be an outlier for most of the G20, NATO, etc if it did vote for the president by popular vote.

It could easily just be lazy journalism. The fact remains that by most statistical analyses (with the exception of the Princeton study) Romney is still in with a chance. Obama is the favorite to win, but I wouldn't bet my house on the outcome. It is too close to call, even if those with the numbers would lean in one direction. this is a boxing match between the world champ and a challenger that has been shown to be the underdog at about 5:1 against. If I was that boxer, I would still fight, I would make myself believe I could win and that the pundits were wrong, and I might just do it. There was no Knockout and both sides have traded punches, the Champ is looking less bruised, but the scorecards will tell us the true outcome.

"Mr Romney certainly has a fighting chance, and if he wins, it won’t discredit Mr Silver." Huh? If the Governor becomes President, every pollster will need to find another line of work because all of them have been discredited with the exception of Rassmussen. Democratic Party hacks like Silver will need to quit politics altogether. Even if he's right 80% of the time from this point on, everyone will point back to his stunning miscalculation in 2012. Maybe this blog can hire him to oversample liberals who actually get off on DIA's pap.

And if Obama wins, do you promise to shun all the conservative-leaning news outlets that would have misled you about all the polls being skewed against Republicans?

Or will you continue to call guys like Nate Silver (who projected the Republican Congressional landslide in 2010 and the failed recall effort against Republican Governor Walker in Wisconsin) Democratic hacks?

Mathematical illiteracy is bliss. You probably think sports outcomes are determined because of "moxxie", "grittieness", and "momentum". No matter where nerds go they will always be chastised by lesser minds when they tell a story others don't want to hear. Before you respond to this keep this in mind you sited oversampling in a criticism of a person who does not conduct polls! Using that reasoning I can assume that Obama also caused the financial crisis. Also Tim Tebow is terrible.

Last I looked (yesterday) Silver gives Romney roughly a 20% chance of winning. So at least 1 time in 5, Romney should win -- that's the way statistics works.

If everybody who Silver says is favored actually does win, he needs to revise his model. But a Romney win doesn't constitute a "stunning miscalculation." Unless one is ignorant of statistics -- admittedly a depressingly large portion of the public.

Them the Dem party hacks who dominate the pollster business AND media should find a decent job in any case, but they wouldn't. One thing that they aren't capable for anything decent, and second, who'll hire them?
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Both the mainstream media and the pollsters are trying to influence the voting, not to cover election or fairly research people's attitudes to election for long years now. What's amazing is that their propagandist efforts do pay off to a big extent - just because a lot of voters don't vote ON PRINCIPLES, but buy political advertisement from journos and pollsters.
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And specifically in this election things are so simple: Romney could be this or that, not the brightest Republican in history... but he surely doesn't hate his own country and doesn't seek its utter destruction. His buddies and role models aren't bent on worldwide Caliphate or/and collectivist totalitarian Tartarus - all things which Obama openly pursues. How difficult is it to make the choice in these circumstances?

"[Romney] surely doesn't hate his own country and doesn't seek its utter destruction. His buddies and role models aren't bent on worldwide Caliphate or/and collectivist totalitarian Tartarus - all things which Obama openly pursues."

If it's a persistent thing that affects the totals in all states roughly the same way, that suggests something wrong with the polls or the model.

But if it's something like Romney winning Ohio by 4%, while all the polls conducted by the same polling companies in other states predict the results accurately, then someone is going to have a talk with the Ohio elections board about the Central limit theorem.

WR is dooooooomed. What is the First Thing you are instructed to do? Not forget the towel. Soon a pot of petunias and sperm whale will fall on you, and you will be unable to construct a shield using your i-pad thingy.

Well, except for the detail that it would make it a race between Biden and Ryan. And Ryan would be far worse than Romney, while Biden would be only some worse than Obama. Nut neither would be an improvement over the head of the ticket.

The election is finally decided by a counting of the actual votes. Predictions of high probability or near certainty can lead to actually affect the voting - it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy by discouraging supporters of losing candidate from voting, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy by pealing away weaker supporters of losing candidate as it is a huge temptation to go with the perceived winner, and can even cause the opposite effect of making the winning candidates supporters to become complacent and not vote and, thus,actually result in his losing. Any way you look, making such strong predictions by seemingly neutral mathematically/scientifically minded people subverts the essential exercise of democratic rights (strong predictions by partisans, on the other hand, is not a problem, because they will be recognized as such and discounted). Therefore, this is not conduct that should be admired, let alone encouraged. If Mr. Romney wins, Mr. Nate Silver should be held accountable and not given a free pass. He cannot have it both ways.

It could potentially go both ways, however. A high probability of Obama winning could lead more apathetic voters to stay home due to their votes not appearing to matter, giving Romney the edge.
Further, the statisical model that Silver is using is merely reflecting the democratic preferences stated by citizens in polls; there is no subversion. There may be a feedback effect, but it is possibly for it to go both ways and thus my hypothesis is that they most likely counteract one another.